The daughter of Korean immigrant parents who came to America shortly after the Pacific War, Kim was born in White Plains, New York and raised in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Following a long career in graphic design, she received her MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College in 2001.

Kim's epic historical novel, inspired by the life of her mother, is about a young woman who fights for a brighter future in early 20th-century Korea during the Japanese occupation.

The Calligrapher's Daughter won the 2009 Borders Original Voices Award for Fiction[3] and was shortlisted for the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

[4] Her stories and essays were published by Potomac Review, APAJ (the former literary journal of the Asian American Writers' Workshop), Our Bodies, Ourselves (2005 edition) and in anthologies, including Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writing,[5] edited by Elaine H. Kim and Hyun Yi Kang.